Reimagining Durable Skills Development for Middle School Youth

Success in the modern workplace will require more than just technical prowess. Tomorrow’s workers will also need to cultivate interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, and resilience as employers prioritize essential durable human skills that cannot be replicated by AI and machines. In fact, research shows that over 70 percent of executives think durable skills, like critical thinking, collaboration, and communication, are more important to their organizations than highly technical AI skills and 78 percent of the 10 top-employing occupations classify uniquely human skills and tasks as “important” or “very important.” Students are also eager to acquire the skills they’ll need in the workforce; three in four agree they want to learn skills that prepare them for jobs. But too often, employers today have a hard time finding candidates with the durable skills their companies need, often because our education system delays skill-building for a career until the latter years of high school or even postsecondary education. This session will explore several promising approaches to starting the acquisition of skills, particularly foundational durable skills, and workforce preparedness much earlier in a student’s educational journeys, both inside and beyond the classroom.